Lipstick On A Pig

Chapter 8

When we got back to the car, however, we saw Charlotte sitting on the hood, looking annoyed.

“You two look like you’ve been doing something you shouldn’t have,” she said as soon as we got near.

“You can’t come out here and accuse us of something you don’t even know we’ve done!” Sophie immediately argued back.

“I can just tell.”

“You cannot!” I replied.

“Fine. Were you two doing something you know I wouldn’t agree with?

“No,” Sophie lied. “I mean, maybe, but what does it matter? We have information. How did you find us, anyway?”

“The coffee shop where I met Kelsey and Laura is two blocks from here, and as I was walking back to my car I saw yours. Seeing as you didn’t get any information yesterday, I figured you’d come back here today, and you were probably going to do something stupid to try and get information.

“Do you really have that little faith in us?” I asked, pretending to be stabbed in the heart.

“Yes,” Charlotte replied heartlessly.

“Well, I think that lack of faith is misplaced,” Sophie said.

“Tell me what you did then?”

“You’ll just complain about it, no matter what.”

“Only if it’s bad.”

“Wouldn’t you rather know what we found out? Isn’t that more important than pretending you’re better than us all the time?” Sophie asked and I stepped in between them.

“Ok, you know what? We’re going to go grab some lunch somewhere we can’t be overheard, and we’re going to go discuss what we discovered.”

Charlotte eyed us suspiciously, but agreed.

My vote was for Chipotle, but I was outvoted, and we ended up at Shut Up and Eat, a Portland institution that served up huge, delicious sandwiches on amazing bread. Charlotte nabbed us the most isolated picnic table outside, while Sophie and I went in to order the food. I got a half Mediterranean sandwich with a side of salad, while Sophie and Charlotte completely dropped their usual style of ordering vegetarian when I was around and got a meatball sandwich and a chicken parm sandwich, respectively.

Fifteen minutes later we had our sandwiches and were enjoying the sunshine of the day, the sound of traffic roaring past silencing our conversation to any passers-by.

“So, what did you find out?” Charlotte asked when we were seated.

“Well, I honestly didn’t find out that much. The closest I got to anything was that Jessica Oliver might have had a boyfriend in the office,” I started, lamely. I hoped Sophie had fared better, I’d done some pretty important magic for us to get into those offices this morning.

“I can tell you that not only did she have a boyfriend at the office, but I can tell you more than that,” Sophie said. “She was actually having an affair with a married man at the office. I have no idea who it was, though. I also found out she was definitely not liked at the office, at least not among the female staff. A lot of them got the impression that the only reason she was still working there was because of this relationship with this unknown man.”

“Why didn’t you press and find out who it was?” I asked, and Sophie shrugged.

“I didn’t want to seem too suspicious. Like you, with that half donut trick.”

“Ugh, you heard that?” I asked, suddenly embarrassed. “At least they fell for it. Or at least, they pretended to.”

“What donut trick?” Charlotte asked suspiciously, and Sophie’s love of making fun of me overrode her plan to not tell Charlotte what we had been doing.

“Angie got caught eating a donut, and then one of the workers told her she wasn’t supposed to eat that since she had diabetes, and Angie just threw it out and said her doctor said the diabetes was getting better and she could have half a donut a week.”

“Why would workers think Angela had diabetes?” Charlotte asked, and I groaned inwardly.

“We made two people fall asleep and then swapped identities with them for a couple of hours to find out as much information as we could about Jessica Oliver.”

Charlotte looked from Sophie to me.

“You cannot be serious.”

“Well, technically, I didn’t do any of it,” Sophie said. “Seeing as I don’t have any magical powers and all. It was all Angie, really.”

I glared at Sophie. “Really? You spill the beans and now you’re hanging me out to dry, too? Thanks, former bestie.”

Sophie shrugged. “It’s every woman for herself.”

“Did you seriously do that?” Charlotte asked, and I shrugged noncommittally. Sometimes it felt like I was the younger sister, not the other way around.

“You are absolutely unbelievable. Do you know how dangerous that was?”

“You mean the magic I was using? And that I did it correctly?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“It wasn’t any more dangerous than when you turned us into birds,” I protested. “It’s pretty much the same thing.”

“It is absolutely not the same thing. Those are other humans! What if you’d messed it up?”

“Well I didn’t, did I?”

“Luckily for you,” Charlotte muttered.

“Oh, so it’s totally fine to shapeshift when you’re ok with it, but not when it’s just us? I’m glad we’ve got that straightened out,” I replied.

“It wouldn’t even be so bad if the two of you had found out anything good,” Charlotte complained.

“What do you mean?” Sophie argued. “I found out she was having an affair with someone at the office!”

“Not only did I already know that, but I also know who with. And I didn’t have to do any magic to find out.”

“Oh, when were you planning on sharing that little tidbit with us?” Sophie asked. “If the meatballs on this sandwich weren’t so good, I’d throw one of them at you.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I was going to get to it, after you guys shared your information. Jessica Oliver was having an affair with Jonathan Cork.”

“Cork as in the guy with his name on the door?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “I had a decent length chat with his secretary today.”

“Ohhhh I met him!” Sophie exclaimed. “He gave me the creeps. The kind of guy that you meet in a club and definitely don’t let him buy you a drink in case he roofied it.”

“Well, he was off the market on two counts. He not only has a wife, but he was also seeing Jessica Oliver on the side.”

“Maybe he got tired of her nagging him to divorce his wife and killed her,” I suggested.

“Or maybe his wife found out about the affair and did it herself,” Sophie offered.

“Remember though? Angela said one of the goats saw a man near the petting zoo the night before.”

“Oh, yeah. Ok, so the wife is out, and Cork is our best suspect. Did you find out anything else, Charlotte?”

“Nothing super important. She was getting pretty terrible grades in law school, but not bad enough to be kicked out of the program.”

“A terrible grade to you is less than ninety percent, what numbers are you talking about by normal people standards?” Sophie asked.

Charlotte shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just told they were bad. And this was a ‘normal person’ that told me,” she said, doing air quotes while rolling her eyes to emphasize her distaste of Sophie’s use of the phrase.

My phone suddenly buzzed.

Coffee? It was Jason.

Sure, give me an hour though. In Portland right now.

His reply came a minute later. Ooooh, someone’s investigating another murder case!

You don’t know that :-P

Like you were ever going to do anything else. Betty’s?

See you in an hour.

“Did you get any more info other than that?” I asked Charlotte, and she shook her head.

“Nothing especially important. Just stuff on how she was an amazing person, and she could be a bit vain but she had a heart of gold, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, that was totally the impression I got from her,” Sophie said, rolling her eyes.

Charlotte shrugged. “Who knows. She had to actually be nice to Laura, or she wouldn’t have been friends with her at all.”

“Hey, if you guys are done eating, let’s head back home. I’m going to meet Jason at Betty’s in an hour. He’ll have been investigating her murder too. I’ll see if I can pump him for information.”

“I bet that’s not the only thing that’ll be pumping when you two get together,” Sophie teased, and I rolled my eyes in exasperation.